Two Star Cross'd Lovers
by kate-melissa
Summary: To everyone else she was a Gryffindor and he was a Slytherin. To each other, she was Isolde and he was Barty. This is their story.


Mrs. Crouch comes to her son's cell everyday without fail. Everyday she tells him, "I love you," and today is no exception. He doesn't speak and nor does she expect him too. He's been in there for months now, awaiting the Dementor's Kiss. He sit's in the same spot in the high security cell, only moving to the bars of his door when they bring his food.

She wraps a hand around one of the black bars and watches him. He's sitting against a wall in the corner, his hands resting on his bent knees. His head is looking down and his unruly hair and scraggly stubble cover his face. Mrs. Crouch wishes they'd come in and give him a hair cut, or let him shave his face, but she knows he won't need to be neat and tidy where he's going.

He does not speak as she watches him. He just sits there, thinking. There was nothing physically wrong with her son, Macy Nightingale, the Healer, had told her. Mrs. Crouch had swiftly asked her to leave and soon stalked away from her son's cell herself.

Mrs. Crouch looks at her son one more time before she leaves for the day. She knows there'll be no more visitors, her husband had not come to see him and that girl certainly hadn't either.

She decides that she's going to do it. Tomorrow, she's going to come for him, drink some Polyjuice Potion and swap with him. Tomorrow, she's going to save her son.

As Barty Crouch Junior sits in the dank, dark, dirty cell, awaiting his death, unaware of his mother's plans, he thinks. He thinks about what his life was before he became a Death Eater – a real Death Eater and not just someone behind the mask, when she was happy to become Mrs. Barty Crouch Junior.

He misses her, he really does. She's on his mind every second of every day. Not that he can distinguish between day and night anymore, being stuck in this cell devoid of any sun or moonlight. He doesn't know how long he's been in here now; he's lost track of all the times his mother has been to see him.

Barty thinks back to when he'd met Isolde, when she was the Gryffindor and he was the Slytherin. And those friends of hers, those annoying Prewett twins who tried to talk her out of their relationship. And they did. But then, if he remembers correctly, they were the only ones who could talk her back into it. He wonders what happened to those twins. Probably still working for that damned Order of the Phoenix that Isolde worked for.

He remembers that party they went to – the costume one where he was Romeo and she was Juliet. He remembers the way she squealed when he suggested it to her, the girl obsessed with Shakespeare. He also remembers how her roommate Marlene McKinnon and her boyfriend at the time, Scamander or something, turned up to the very same party with the very same costumes. Mind you, the actual costumes were slightly different, but Isolde had gone off her rocker and broke Marlene's nose.

He remembers when they moved in together, much to both their parents' dismay. She got her internship at the Daily Prophet and he began his training at the Ministry.

He remembers how she'd disappear off to her Order of the Phoenix meetings, and how he'd disappear off to the Death Eater meetings. It just wasn't the meetings they'd disappear off to of course. There was that one time when she'd been called out to a Death Eater attack and he had been one of the ones doing the attacking. Isolde had been hit by a curse from Bellatrix Lestrange and Barty's heart had almost leapt out of his chest. It took everything in him not to go and curse Bellatrix into oblivion. He remembers what she looked like, lying there in that hospital bed in Saint Mungo's and shivers.

It wasn't long after that that he proposed to her. He sung her a love song that he made and got down on one knee and she screamed so loud when he opened the small, blue velvet box and said, "Isolde, will you marry me?"

They never did get married though. It was just after the Potter's murder. After the Dark Lord disappeared. He doesn't know how she found out, but he'd never seen her so angry. She packed up and moved out.

He was heartbroken. She had been the one good thing in his life and she'd left him. For two weeks he didn't leave their house – well, his house now. He just sat around and waited for them to come and arrest him.

When they did, she was there; Fabian and Gideon were there, along with Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody and Dumbledore. He didn't see her again until the trial.

So he sits in Azkaban for the second time, wondering what his life would have been like if he hadn't made the biggest mistake of his life and chosen Isolde over Voldemort. But he'd made his choice long ago and now he had to live with it. Deep down Barty knew that they'd never be together forever. Times like these it was impossible for a Death Eater to be with someone, let alone someone who belonged to an organization to stop them!

Barty smiles softly, wondering whether she realized that they were their own complicated version of that love story she'd loved so much.

Of course she'd have realized that. Shakespeare buff like her would have drawn the comparisons between them both.

Barty lifts his head as he hears a clicking against the concrete floors of the corridor. He frowns; his mother had already been seen him. Nobody else visited. He looks up and his breath catches in his throat.

There she was.

She was still as beautiful as she was back then, even more so, Barty thought. Her hair was different; she'd grown it out and wore it so it framed her face and hid her eyes. She's dressed in black pants and a smart white shirt. Her ID hangs around her neck and she's clutching a small bag.

Barty is speechless. He opens his mouth, but he can't ask her the question whizzing through his mind: _Why is she here? _

She takes a deep breath and says the word's he's been dying to hear.


End file.
